Oh -- and something funny of which I was reminded when I checked the issues for reference.

Northstar was my first Gay character, but he was almost beaten out of the gate by Pyro.

Yes, I originally intended that character to be Gay, and drew him very, uhm, flamboyant in his civilian dress. But for some reason (I no longer remember just what it was) I decided not to tell Chris of my intent -- and not knowing the character was meant to be Gay, Chris wrote him as BRITISH.

Yes, I originally intended that character to be Gay, and drew him very, uhm, flamboyant in his civilian dress. But for some reason (I no longer remember just what it was) I decided not to tell Chris of my intent -- and not knowing the character was meant to be Gay, Chris wrote him as BRITISH.

Where did you start on this one? Who was the first character you drew? Who was the last?

ēē

I started with Xavier's wheelchair, as I knew that would establish my perspective grid. Working a little bit backwards there, as normally the grid would go down first, but I wanted the large visible wheel to be absolutely spot on, perspective-wise (knowing if it was not, it would ruin the whole piece for me), so I selected the appropriate elliptical template and worked outwards from there. Once the chair was done, I added Xavier, then Scott, then Phoenix, then. . . the rest!

The X-men could be pretty downbeat at times -- and Jean's death was downright tragic -- so it's nice to see a retrospective that is generally full of such unbridled joy. There used to be happy tradition at Marvel of including the occasional 'pin-up' that had a similar feeling. Back when Marvel comics were a bit more...fun.